Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Friday, December 3Ferguson Hall, Room 2803:30 pmFree and open to the public.

Observers of Indian classical music have long commented on the extensive, ubiquitous, near-constant gestural performance of Indian vocalists. Twentieth-century music critics have usually dismissed the gestures of musicians as extra-musical theatrics. In actuality, however, this disciplined motion embodies a special kind of musical knowledge, one that implicitly theorizes melody as motion, that constructs melodic objects, and that is transmitted tacitly through vocal lineages. The transmission of this knowledge through gesture results in lineages of vocalists who not only sound similar, but who engage with music kinesthetically according to similar melodic models and ethical ideals. On the other hand, the musicking body of any individual singer is idiosyncratic and personal, and embodies a musical ethos through both conscious choice and unconscious inheritance. This talk will explore the implications of gestural performance for melodic theory, pedagogy, and theories of the musicking body.

Matt Rahaim is Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at UMN. He is a scholar and longtime student of Hindustani vocal music.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

The Environmental Support Group (ESG) is amongst the foremost proponents in India for the reform of environmental decision making processes, urging that these processes be made more participatory and environmentally and socially just. ESG-initiated or supported campaigns have been largely successful despite the nature of the issues being highly controversial and politically sensitive with national-level implications. In acknowledgment of its inﬂuencing role, ESG's services have been sought by a variety of regional, national and international agencies.

Sponsored by the Institute for Global Studies,the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change,the Institute for Advanced Study,Macalester College's MDC, MAC CARES, and MASECA,the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Be it genetic diversity, lakes, urban commons or grazing pastures and forests, there is a dynamic shift currently occurring in Indian law and policy to commodify the commons and make them available for profit. How does India's current path reflect the historic commodification that occurred here in the United States? What insights can we gain for developing socially just environmental policy in the Midwest moving forward?

Join Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy's (IATP's) Center for Earth, Energy and Democracy for a discussion with Leo Saldanha and Bhargavi Rao, directors of the Environment Support Group (ESG), based in Bangalore, India. The Environment Support Group has been raising important questions about the value of community action, law and policy in protecting public interest, considering that the commons are critical to the sustenance of livelihoods of the poor in urban and rural areas, and especially for natural resource-dependent communities. They have worked with local communities to counter mining pressure in Orissa, been part of the effort to instate a moratorium on the release of a new genetically modified organism: Bt Brinjal, conducted analysis to protect national coastal and forest protection laws, and campaigned against unjust infrastructure projects--all in the face of rapidly expanding consumerism and commodification of India's natural resources.Please RSVP

Brendan LaRocque's talk will examine the role religion played in the relationship between the Bundela rulers of Bundelkhand (in modern day Madhya Pradesh) and the Mughal empire. He will focus on questions of identity and religious ideology in the rebellion of Maharaja Chhatrasal Bundela (1649-1731) against the empire during the reign of Emperor Aurangzeb. Chattrasal's rebellion has conventionally been understood as being motivated by his desire to protect Hinduism from imperial depradations carried out in the name of Islam. LaRocque will call this view into question through an examination of the ways in which contemporary sources represented the nature and rationale for Chhatrasal's rebellion, and present an alternative theory of the Bundelas' understanding of the uprising.

Brendan LaRocque is Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow at Carleton College. His research is concerned with the role of religion and identity in Mughal India, with a focus on the intersection of religion with the political and economic realms. He is currently working on a book manuscript tentatively titled "Islam, Hinduism, and Community Formation in India: Devotional Religion and Social Change in the Mughal Empire."

Monday, October 25, 2010

The American Institute of Indian Studies welcomes applications for its summer 2011 and academic year 2011-2012 language programs. Programs to be offered include Hindi (Jaipur), Bengali (Kolkata), Punjabi (Chandigarh), Tamil (Madurai); Marathi (Pune), Urdu (Lucknow), Telugu (Vizag), Malayalam (Thiruvananthapuram) and Sanskrit (Pune) and Pali/Prakrit (Pune). We will offer other Indian languages upon request.

All academic year applicants should have the equivalent of two years of prior language study. For regular summer Sanskrit, we require the equivalent of two years of prior study; for summer Bengali, Hindi and Tamil we require the equivalent of one year of prior study. For summer Urdu, we require the equivalent of one year of either Hindi or Urdu. We can offer courses at all levels, including beginning, in other Indian languages for the summer.

Summer students should apply for FLAS (graduate students) if available for funding to cover the costs of the program. Funding for Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi and Urdu may be available through the U.S. State Department's CLS program (see www.clscholarship.org). Academic year students are eligible to apply for an AIIS fellowship which would cover all expenses for the program. AIIS is also offering a fall semester program. We offer Hindi and Urdu at all levels for the fall; we require two years of prior language study for other languages for the fall. The application deadline is January 31, 2011. Applications can be downloaded from the AIIS web site at www.indiastudies.org.

See the fliers below. For more information: Phone: 773-702-8638. Email: aiis@uchicago.edu.

All donations will be sent to Mehergarh Foundation, Pakistan (www.mgf-usa.org)

Had-Anhad, by Shabnam Virmani, is a lively, dramatic film that will move you to faith, hope, and tenderness in this time of crisis and emergency. The film is focused on Kabir, the 15th century mystic poet of north India who defied the boundaries between Hindu and Muslim. He had a Muslim name and upbringing, but his poetry repeatedly invokes the widely revered Hindu name for God - Ram.

Who is Kabir's Ram? Kabir renders a different Ram from contemporary invocations of the Hindu God Ram, and a South Asia different from that portrayed in contemporary politics. This film journeys through song and poem into the politics of religion, and finds a myriad answers on both sides of the hostile border between India and Pakistan. Join us on a journey through Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Karachi as we listen to folk musicians give us mesmerizing renditions of Kabir bhajans and dohas. (In Hindi & Urdu with English Subtitles: 103 min.)